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Water-Prospecting Lunar Rover Prototype Built
Zothecula writes "Astrobotic Technology Inc., a spin-off company of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), has debuted its full-size flight prototype of its Polaris lunar water-prospecting robot. Polaris is specially designed to work in the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's poles. Scheduled to be sent to the Moon using a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle, the solar-powered rover is a contender in the US$20 million Google Lunar X Prize and is tasked with seeking ice deposits that could be used by future colonists."
Duh. It's going to use the photocells to power a light aimed at the photocells!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Since your clicking finger may be broken, here is a relevant section of the article to help you out:
To find the ice, a rover thus must operate as close to the dark poles as possible, but not so far that it can't use solar arrays for power, Whittaker said. Polaris thus has three large solar arrays, arranged vertically to capture light from low on the horizon. The solar arrays will be capable of an average of 250 watts of electrical power.
Funny how they did actually consider this before designing a multi-million dollar robot. It looks like maybe they did complete Physics 101.
*tweet*
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When they say permanently shadowed, they mean from directly above. I have seen the rover (I attend CMU), it has solar cells that face toward the horizon, to capture the small amount of energy that comes over the side. Apparently it works pretty well and efficiently, or so they say :)